


Breakfast of Champions

by turtle_paced



Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 19:21:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6091408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turtle_paced/pseuds/turtle_paced
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Friends help friends. The day after Apprentice, Part Two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breakfast of Champions

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr's meddlingwithdragons is responsible for this.

The celebration had been wild. The huge pile of emptied cola bottles was a sight to behold, the next morning (Beast Boy had built a pyramid out of them sometime around midnight), and when Cyborg checked the gamestation, he saw that a) they really _had_ been playing karaoke games and b) Raven really _did_ have a profile on the machine now. It was definitely the biggest party they’d held since they’d started this whole crime-fighting thing.

And why shouldn’t they party? Cyborg thought groggily. They’d kicked Slade’s ass. They’d kicked Slade’s ass into _next week_. There were no chronoton detonators, they were all probe-free, they’d rescued their fearless leader -

\- who was awake, actually, and cooking bacon and eggs. Cyborg had wondered why the common room was smelling so good, rather than like pizza left out on the table overnight.

More importantly, though, Robin was never up early if he could help it. It was a Gotham thing, he always said, which Cyborg interpreted as _it’s a Batman thing_ , and it involved staying up until dawn and sleeping until about lunchtime. He was almost never up at six in the morning. Six in the morning was an hour or two after his bedtime.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Cyborg asked.

“No,” Robin said. He hesitated, then said, “Didn’t sleep. Don’t really want to right now.”

Not that anyone could tell. If there were shadows under his eyes, they were also under the mask. Like always. Cyborg liked Robin, he really did. There weren’t many people he respected more. Sometimes, though, it was hard to trust him. Or not _him_ , but how he did things. He kept people out almost as well as Raven did. So for him to admit that he hadn’t slept, with the implication that there were nightmares waiting for him, that was rare. It was the sort of thing Cyborg knew Robin would usually only tell Star.

“Is it going to be a problem?” Cyborg asked, keeping his voice light as possible. Pushing Robin, as they’d all found out after the Red X fiasco, didn’t solve anything. Felt good, yeah, but didn’t solve anything.

“Maybe,” Robin said, and flipped a strip of bacon over. “I’ve made enough for you, if you want some.”

“Hell yeah I want some!” Cyborg himself was the best cook in the tower (who knew, maybe Star was a Tameranian culinary genius), but Robin knew his way around a stove too, and it was nice not to have to make himself breakfast.

Robin pushed a bowl of chopped fruit at him, which was quickly followed by the eggs and bacon. Instead of sitting down to eat, though, he started cooking a batch of waffles. “Partying through the night?” Cyborg asked.

“I need something to do,” Robin said. “I figure breakfast is the least of what I owe you guys.”

“You don’t owe us anything,” Cyborg said. “We know what you were trying to do, man. We understand.”

Robin shook his head and whisked the waffle batter just a little harder. “I don’t want to talk about…the specifics. Just - I owe you.”

 _You opened the door_ , Cyborg thought. It wouldn’t do any good to say that either. Besides, if he’d had to spend two days with Slade, if he’d been forced to dress up like the psycho, made to steal things and fight his friends, he probably wouldn’t want to talk about the specifics either.

No wonder Robin didn’t want to sleep right now. Cyborg had had enough nightmares and enough bad memories of his own to know that the worst part was the waking up. You had to accept it was real when you woke up.

Star would know how to get Robin to deal with this. If Robin kept avoiding sleep, he’d have to ask her specially. But for now, he’d accept breakfast as a totally unnecessary peace offering. Whatever made their fearless leader feel better.

 

—

 

When Starfire got up, she was pleasantly surprised to find Cyborg in the kitchen. Her friend Cyborg often cooked delicious Earth food, and sometimes added things that were very agreeable to her Tameranian tastes. A bottle of the delicious mustard, for instance, had been left at her customary place at the table.

“Don’t look at me,” Cyborg said. He had the tired look on his face that suggested he had not partaken of the coffee, a drink she was given to understand brought much vitality in the morning. “The boy wonder left that there for you. Waffles too.”

“Oh, that is most kind of him!” she said, and then looked around. “Do you know where he is, Cyborg? I wish to thank him for his consideration.”

“Gym,” Cyborg said. “Star, he hasn’t slept. Now he’s off beating himself up more. Probably breaking his knuckles on some punching bags. I don’t know how to stop him when he gets like this.” He sighed heavily. “He sure knows how to make a man feel useless.”

“But you are not useless,” Starfire said immediately. “You are full of the good ideas and concern for our teammates and our home. I value your advice and am grateful for telling me what ails Robin. I will look after him, and you will look after the team while he recovers from this ordeal.”

If Blackfire was…different…she herself would have been expected to serve the role for Tameran that Cyborg filled for the Teen Titans. She was grateful indeed. Being second to a leader was a difficult role. One had to cover for their leader’s weaknesses while always being ready to step into their shoes should they fall or otherwise be incapacitated. Starfire knew that she could not do that, not while Robin was her leader.

She nodded decisively, smiled at Cyborg, and ate her waffles in a single gulp.

He smiled in return. “You say the nicest things, Star. Now go on. Can’t let Robin break a nail, right?”

“Right!” Starfire agreed. “The magazines I have purchased all agree that the breaking of a nail is a grievous injury on Earth. It ruins the painting of the fingernails. I have put a great deal of effort into the painting of _my_ nails and would not wish them spoiled.” She thought about it. “Has Robin also engaged in the painting of the nails?”

For some reason, this made Cyborg laugh. Starfire could only guess that the painting of the nails was one of the beauty routines that only Earth females engaged in, and not Earth males. But she could ponder the reasons for the difference later. She had to go cheer up Robin.

 

—

 

Outside his room, someone was dragging a lump of metal. There was no way to sleep while _that_ was going on. With a groan, Beast Boy rolled out of bed and went to check the commotion. “Dude -“ he started, fully expecting to see Cyborg, then corrected himself as he realised who it was, “- Starfire, what’s all the noise? And why are you dragging half the obstacle course behind you?”

“I am going to spot Robin on the weights,” she said cheerfully. “Cyborg does not wish him to break any of his knuckles, and I do not wish him to break any nails.” Her face fell, and her voice grew soft. “He has suffered much, the past few days.”

Oh, crud. Starfire, sad. He was never good at dealing with her - or any girl, really - when she got honestly upset. “Robin’s tough,” he tried to assure her. His arms may have flapped frantically, shifting into chicken wings as he did, but he meant it. “He’ll be fine!”

“I have been imprisoned before,” she said quietly. “There was a lock on my door and manacles on my arms. They were dragging me to somewhere terrible. It was the most horrible experience of my life. What Slade did…he made us the lock on the door and the manacles around Robin’s arms, and the place he was trying to take Robin was away from who he truly is.”

“Wow. That’s kinda…I dunno. Poetic?” It put a shiver down Beast Boy’s spine, that was for sure. He’d been put in a cage once or twice, and it had sucked majorly every time. Mostly, though, cages couldn’t hold him for long. The sort Starfire was describing actually could.

And he still didn’t know how to cheer her up.

“It is true all the same,” Starfire said. “There are not words for this sort of thing on Tameran. I do not have the proper words for what was done to him, and I do not know if I can find the words to help him.”

“Who can?” Beast Boy asked. “Wait, hang on, nothing against Robin, I didn’t mean it like that!”

“Oh?”

Star’s eyes were big and sad and hopeful as she waited for an explanation. Crud, crud, crud. “None of us _know_ what’s going to make someone else happy, right?” he tried. “All we can do is try. Kind of like I do with Raven.”

“Raven never laughs at your jokes,” Starfire said. But there was a gleam in her eyes that had been missing before.

“Yeah! But she jokes back, doesn’t she?”

“I see!”

It worked! Holy crap, he couldn’t believe it. “No problem, Starfire!” Now she was even smiling - and not dragging her lump of metal with her, which was way easier on his ears. The floors too, and oh man, Cy was going to kill her when he saw the scratches. “If anything can cheer up Robin, it’ll be you! That or a really interesting crime.”

“Robin does not take pleasure in crimes,” Starfire said severely. “And you should not joke about it. Especially not right now.”

She could be as scary as Raven when she put her mind to it. “Got it, ma’am.” Beast Boy scratched the back of his head. “Good luck?”

Suddenly as she had been angered, Starfire was happy again. Girls! So confusing. “Thank you for your words of comfort, Beast Boy,” she said. “I shall keep them in mind.”

“Go for it,” he said. “Just - can you keep it down when you start hauling metal around?”

 

—

 

“Whatcha doing?”

The interruption had become familiar to Raven since she had started living at the Tower. Sometimes it wasn’t even an unwelcome interruption. “I was reading,” Raven said, being careful not to stress the past tense. She could find her place in the book again. And she had to admit to herself that her thoughts had been unsettled this morning.

The party had been a good idea. Even the karaoke. It hadn’t been the happiest gathering she’d attended in her life. There was too much sheer relief for that, and it was hard to ignore how Robin was on edge. But they had needed it. They had needed it badly. 

Though _need_ was too strong a word for the karaoke.

Beast Boy was still standing in front of her, looking awkward. They were the only two in the common room; Cyborg had gone to fix up the Tower’s defences for the umpteenth time, while Robin and Starfire were in the gym.

“What is it, Beast Boy?” Raven asked.

“Do you ever feel helpless?” he asked. “Like…the only thing you can do is stand by and watch.”

 _More than you think_ , Raven thought. Out loud, she said, “Is this about yesterday?”

“Well, yeah. We fell for a decoy, spent hours and hours running all over the city looking for Robin, and when we found him he stomped us, twice -“ He swallowed, hard. “That was kinda embarrassing.”

Raven waved it off. “It’s Robin. The only person he can’t beat is Slade.” Some days she was tempted to believe that her friends could even defeat her father. Useless. Dangerous.

“And Batman!” Raven saw a flash of fanboy loyalty in his eyes, but then he went on, “Then we spent _even longer_ looking for Robin _again_ , and that time when we caught up with him all we did was get zapped by those nano-probe-mite-things, which we only had in us ‘cause we fell for that decoy in the first place.”

“It wasn’t our finest hour,” Raven agreed.

“And you’re okay with that?” he yelped.

“Nope. We have to do better next time.”

“…It’s that simple for you?”

“Yep.”

“Huh.”

“It’s already happened,” Raven said. “It can’t be changed. It only matters now because we can learn from it, and _not_ run all over the city like bulls after a red cape next time.”

“Huh,” Beast Boy said again. “That’s one way to think about it, I guess.”

“Besides, we did manage to do something right,” she said, thinking back. “We were _there_.” No matter what she told Beast Boy, the memory of Robin utterly defeated and on his knees wasn’t going to go away any time soon. “If we hadn’t come when we did, Robin would have given up. We have to do better next time, because there _will_ be a next time.”

Her friends had all survived Slade intact, but there was worse coming.

Beast Boy shook his head. “You are a strange person sometimes. Thanks, though. That helped. I think.”

“All of life is a learning experience,” Raven said. “Glad to be of service.”

Interruption dealt with, she returned to her book in peace.

 

—

 

He’d been out for a full day. Twenty-four blissfully Slade-free hours. He still hadn’t been able to sleep, and the lack was catching up with him at last. Robin stifled both a yawn and the impulse to rub at his aching, itching eyes.

“You should really get some sleep,” Raven said. “You’re making me tired just looking at you.”

“Soon,” Robin said. Because soon he’d drop off whether he liked it or not. What little sleep he’d got in Slade’s lair hadn’t been exactly restful. He’d stayed awake for the party last night, then he’d stayed awake all day as well. He didn’t want to find out what his brain was going to cook up by way of nightmares.

Raven closed her book with a soft snap. “You going to talk to anyone about what happened?”

“I talked to Star, a bit,” he said. “She usually knows when I’m getting off track.” _Going wrong_.

He could hear the smile in his friend’s voice. “She does.”

“It was awful,” Robin said. “He wouldn’t shut up. Yeah, he did a lot of gloating, but he was serious about teaching me. A lot of the stuff he said about breaking and entering - it was quality advice, and I listened to it. Like a good little student,” he added bitterly.

“You…hate yourself for it?”

Raven was watching him intently now, as though his confession was instructive. Maybe it was. It was definitely a heavy question, but Star had said that he should not be ashamed to share more of himself in the wake of this. She had said it would be the fastest way for the others to trust him fully once again.

He took a deep breath and said, “I don’t like what I’ve found out about myself the past few days. I don’t like that the best insight I ever get into Slade’s plans is by asking myself what I’d do in his situation. I don’t like that when I think about how alike we are, I decide that it’s worth it if I can continue being this successful. I hate that I _lost_.”

And he’d lost. It was a sizeable consolation that Slade hadn’t won, either.

“For what it’s worth,” Raven said, “I can’t imagine you as not…obsessive and competitive.”

“I think it’s part of me for good,” Robin agreed. Despite his words to Star earlier, before the party even, it stung his pride to admit it. “But I can’t make better choices if I don’t know what my problems are.”

“Do you think you can really do that?”

“I won’t know unless I try,” he said.

“Nobody gets to beat you,” Raven said, and he could hear her smile again. “Not even you.”

“That’s right,” Robin replied, and he tried to sound confident instead of exhausted.

“Are you going to get some sleep now?”

Robin lay down on the couch. “Maybe.”

 

—

 

Six in the morning and once again Cyborg was the first one wandering through the halls. All those years of early sports training hadn’t been erased when half his body had been replaced by metal.

When he opened the door to the common room, he found that Raven was still awake. That made two days in a row he had early company. “Morning,” she said, glancing up from her book.

“Morning,” Cyborg replied. “Why’re you up so early?”

“I wanted to finish my book.”

“Fair enough.” He poured her a cup of coffee. When he brought it over, he spotted Robin asleep on the sofa. “Oh, hey, he finally took a nap.”

“He sure did,” said Raven, and turned a page. “Out like a light.”

Behind him, he heard a loud, worried whisper of “Friend Cyborg? Friend Raven?”

“What is it, Star?”

“I did not hear Robin return to his room last night,” she said. “Do you know -“ 

As one, Cyborg and Raven pointed to the object of her inquiry.

“Glorious,” Starfire said. “But is this not the wrong side of the bed that I have been told so much about? Will he not be grouchy when he awakens?”

“Probably,” Cyborg said, “But that’s nothing different.”

Suddenly, the window rattled as a green bird smacked into it. A second later, Beast Boy shifted back into his human form, grabbed a ledge, and shouted, “Good morning!”

Raven dropped her book. Star went “eep!” and fell over backwards. Cyborg shouted in alarm. Robin rolled over in his sleep and mumbled something that might have been _Titans, go!_

“Beast Boy, what the hell?”

“Early morning flight!” Beast Boy said, climbing in through the window that Star had raced to open once she realised BB had shifted back to something without wings. “It’s nice every once in a while. What’s everyone else doing up?”

“Knitting circle,” Raven said.

“What is the circle of knitting?”

“An activity that usually involves more peace and quiet.”

“I’ll have you know I’m a world-class knitter,” Beast Boy said.

“We haven’t had so much peace and quiet for ages,” Cyborg said. “Who wants waffles? There’s no problem I know can’t be solved by waffles.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
